Ever been this far behind?

rkmiec · Nov 16, 2012

Yeah,I need to get going. Some of these are years old. Hoping for the best.

mopar_guy · Nov 17, 2012

You'll need developer and fixer.

albada · Nov 17, 2012

When Winogrand died, he left thousands of undeveloped rolls. And your legacy will be only a couple dozen? Gotta shoot more...

Mark Overton

polyglot · Nov 17, 2012

Years old is bad but the quantity is nothing. I brought home 100 rolls from my last holiday.

F/1.4 · Nov 17, 2012

albada said:
When Winogrand died, he left thousands of undeveloped rolls. And your legacy will be only a couple dozen? Gotta shoot more...

Mark Overton

Exactly what I was thinking. I read that he just went insane when he got a motor drive for his leica....?

Stephanie Brim · Nov 17, 2012

You know what's more fun? Playing "What Did I Expose" with the 4x5 film holders from 3 years ago.

Toffle · Nov 17, 2012

Stephanie Brim said:
You know what's more fun? Playing "What Did I Expose" with the 4x5 film holders from 3 years ago.

I do this on a regular basis, though I suppose I could look it up - all my LF is recorded in a field book. The problem is, my field notation really needs some work. I can hardly decipher the intent of some of my notes. On the other hand, I can usually recall quite clearly the circumstances under which I shot a particular sheet or roll of film... once I get a look at the processed negatives.

I was caught up on all my processing, if not printing... then I did something really dumb - I started the "picture a day" challenge. That was on January 1, 2010, and I have shot at least one "considered" frame every day, usually several. Back in September, I passed the 1000 day threshold and am still going. The problem is, at this point, my budget does not begin to cover the cost of processing the backlog of films stacked in and around my darkroom fridge.

Bob-D659 · Nov 17, 2012

No, but I easily could have been if the weather co-operated this summer.

Brian C. Miller · Nov 17, 2012

They'll be fine. Get going and get developing!

RattyMouse · Nov 17, 2012

polyglot said:
Years old is bad but the quantity is nothing. I brought home 100 rolls from my last holiday.

Wow....where'd you go? What was the total cost in film and processing?

mooseontheloose · Nov 17, 2012

RattyMouse said:
Wow....where'd you go? What was the total cost in film and processing?

Well, can't speak for polyglot but I regularly come back from my trips (1-4 weeks) with 20-100 rolls. As 80% is B&W, I have no idea what the cost of processing is, although I know it's minimal since chemicals are cheap and I do all my own. Colour is usually slide and will set me back about $5 a roll here in japan. And getting back to the OP, I've had a similar backlog, although I can normally get back to it within the year.

markbarendt · Nov 17, 2012

mooseontheloose said:
Well, can't speak for polyglot but I regularly come back from my trips (1-4 weeks) with 20-100 rolls. As 80% is B&W, I have no idea what the cost of processing is, although I know it's minimal since chemicals are cheap and I do all my own. Colour is usually slide and will set me back about $5 a roll here in japan. And getting back to the OP, I've had a similar backlog, although I can normally get back to it within the year.

We are heading for Oregon to see our first grand baby. I fully expect to get 25-30 this week.

rkmiec · Nov 17, 2012

I had 4 rolls processed when I posted this. Luckily my chemicals are still good but I will need to get more to finish all these. Is fixed reusable,I reuse hypo and photo flo but I have not been saving fixer.

ann · Nov 17, 2012

Not in the same direction; I develop the rolls quickly and then let them sit for years.

Have negatives that are over 7 years old, never been printed.

markbarendt · Nov 17, 2012

Yes fix is reusable.

I pour the fix in the beaker I'll be using and then dunk and stir in an inch or two of leader from the film I'll be developing and see how long it takes to clear. Use at least double that time.

removed account4 · Nov 17, 2012

albada said:
When Winogrand died, he left thousands of undeveloped rolls. And your legacy will be only a couple dozen? Gotta shoot more...

Mark Overton

pentaxuser · Nov 17, 2012

With fixer it is worth checking the amount of silver in it. It will eventually exhaust and cease to clear the undeveloped and fix the rest. You can buy test kits to do this. Fixer makers will also give recommendations in their literature.

For what it is worth a 250ml bottle of 1+4 fixer will do about 5-6 135 films before the test suggests dumping it but it is probably safer to stop at 4 films.

Others might suggest dumping much sooner on the " fixer is cheap, why save it and take any risk" basis but I rely on the test with a safety margin which give me 4 135 films

Same for 120 except that the bottles are bigger

pentaxuser

removed account4 · Nov 17, 2012

i would mix fresh fixer and do a clip test.
find out how long it takes to clear a piece of film in room light
and do the same thing for your old fixer ... if it takes 2x the first test ( unused fix )
it is no good ... you can use your old fix for your first bath and use fresh fix to "clean up"

its not worth using spent old fixer to process film unless you know how spent it actually is ...

good luck processing all your film !
when i returned from visiting family overseas
i had about 30 or 40 assorted rolls of film ( 35mm, 120, color, chrome bw )
and a bunch of 4x5 sheet film too ... ( 30 sheets ? )
it goes quick once you dig in

just make sure you have room to hang / dry it !

- john

Ian Grant · Nov 17, 2012

Not sure where you get those figures from. A litre of Hypam or Ilford Rapid Fixer at 1+4 is fine for 24 rolls of 35mm or 120 film. Films and RC papers can tolerate far higher levels of silver than fibre based papers without affecting archival permanence.

Ian

Pat Erson · Nov 17, 2012

Ian Grant said:
A litre of Hypam or Ilford Rapid Fixer at 1+4 is fine for 24 rolls of 35mm or 120 film.
Ian

I wonder if the same figures can apply to the Tetenal fixer. Their tech data is pretty much undecipherable imo...

markbarendt · Nov 17, 2012

Just checked TF5 they say 15-20 rolls per liter.

removed-user-1 · Nov 17, 2012

rkmiec said:
Yeah,I need to get going. Some of these are years old. Hoping for the best.

I think I'm right there with you. You might have an edge by a couple rolls. This almost never happens with my black-and-white roll film, and I always process large format immediately. My color stuff tends to sit for years; I have rolls of slide film I shot for a grad school project that got derailed in 2008. So I just got a Unicolor C41 kit and an Arista E6 kit. Haven't processed my own color since about 1995, but here we go!

mopar_guy · Nov 17, 2012

I used to be bad about letting exposed film sit around and not process it. In the last three years I have really made an effort to develop my black and white quickly and send out my color film to the lab at regular intervals. Now I just need more time to print things up in the darkroom. A few weeks ago I had printed up a bunch of snapshots of our daughter and granddaughter and those got snapped up by my "models" so fast it made my head spin. It is nice to be appreciated.

lensman_nh · Nov 17, 2012

Developing I'm usually pretty on top of.

I am however years behind on my printing ......

J.

Peter de Groot · Nov 17, 2012

I rarely print anything actually. I do scan though. And tomorrow I am starting to develop 37 rolls of colour film. I can only do 10 rolls at a time so I guess It wel taken the rest of the week to process. And then to scan it.

Ever been this far behind?

removed-user-1

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